Significant Problems in Acute Anterior Poliomyelitis

Although the researches of the past twenty years have exposed many of the complicated secrets of acute anterior poliomyelitis, there are still certain key points which remain unsolved. Of these the most pressing are, first, the exact way or ways of transmission; second, the sure diagnosis of the disease before the moment of invasion of the central nervous system; and, third, a satisfactory method of protective immunization. An answer to the first of these problems would quickly set at rest the present justifiable anxiety of parents, because a real step toward epidemic control would follow. The suspected healthy carrier and the unrecognized mild case not showing paralysis together form a combination which utterly defeats the ends of any but absolute quarantine of entire families. If, in addition to the now firmly established fact of direct transmission from person to person, there be added the possibility of raw food and milk